Good article from Chrissie

"Basically it meant recovering quickly to withstand the stress of high-intensity
training day in, day out without fatigue."

"The main volume change boiled down to increases in
the length of the longer run and longer ride, but I still never rode over five
hours and never ran over 2:20hrs. In short, don’t become obsessed by kilometres
or time; quality is the key in your sessions."

That will never work. /SARC!! 

Not sure why that would upset anybody?

Volume is still crucially important for the AGer. 

What Chrissie doesn't say is that she was training 25-30 hours per week at peak . At that volume, of COURSE it's not going to help by adding yet other volume.

She would change her advice dramatically for a MOP AGer seeking to improve who was training 7-8 hours per week. I guarantee she would recommend significant volume increases in their cases (as well as intensity increases eventually.) 

Well, you can "buy speed" in the sense you can buy more aerodynamic bike equipment or hydrodynamic wetsuit.  And she had other people to take care of the "data" (even if they didn't track some of the things you might suspect are important).  You can always make the most gains by doing the things that affect the engine (body & mind).  But, beyond that, there are certainly other things you can do.  That she didn't bother just shows she probably left something on the table.  It might not have been very much and she certainly didn't seem to need it to have success.  That part is true for anybody.

Chrisse is the exception, not the rule. Just because she didn't know which end of the bike was the front, doesn't mean that you shouldn't. I would trade my shiny toys for her mental toughness though.

I like Chrissie, but hate this kind of article. Now anyone who runs across it will use it as gospel.

It should have been titled "The top ways I, Chrissie Wellington, was successful at Ironman"

I read Chrissie book as well as Macca's.

Honestly, the secret for both of them - good genetics (not such a big secret, I know.)

Chrissie, with almost no bike/run training, DOMINATED all her bike and run races early on, shocking everyone including experienced coaches. She was dominating on a borrowed bike even in roadie (nontri) bike races. She won Kona without training specifically for Kona, only entering it because Brett Sutton saw how amazing she was doing in training, and just entered her in last-minute.

Macca, in his book, goes on and on about how important his mental strength and diligence to details are - and then completely glosses over the part where he literally starts his book off as a "not-that serious athlete" who happened to accidentally become the Australian youth national running champion, fast enough to enter a high-level youth triathlon in HS on a whim, and win it because he was so fast on the run.

It's honestly challenging for the AGer to take their advice without understanding where these pros started in the first place. Sure, they worked hard to really get to the top of their game, but both of these two started wayyyy out in front, like world-beating front even before they 'got serious.' 

Originally posted by happyscientist Just like I said, I can virtually hear people getting upset.

Only "upset" (I'm not upset at all, just think you are putting words in her mouth and taking things out of context) with your interpretation of what she said.

Training is different for everyone.  Exactly, why not look at the way pros train (or how they have been trained). Chrissie is an animal, I would want to learn from that because it's going to push me to new levels too. Love what you do! 

Yep.

Fisherman said it best a few months ago......"it's not advice for the elite, it's elite advice". 

The truth is, the very fastest among us don't train like most of us.....that's what separates them.  What usually passes for good advice on most of these boards comes from MOP racers, at least at any level beyond their own backyard.  People will listen to what pro baseball players do to get better, what pro basketball players do, tennis payers, blah,blah,blah.......but for some reason mere duffers in triathlon become experts and the truly good in the sport are overlooked as some kind of freaks that have special powers, so what they do cannot possibly carry over for the rest of us........dumb.